Amid increased usage during pandemic, graffiti, trash plague Ohiopyle State Park

Graffiti is back again at Ohiopyle State Park.

Volunteers and park staff spent Thursday cleaning up spray painted political messages, obscenities, drawings of genitalia and personal notes from bridge abutments in two parts of the park, said naturalist Barbara Wallace.

Graffiti was found on a new abutment constructed this year to carry Route 381 over the Youghiogheny River, she said.

Another defaced abutment is part of a high bridge that carries the Great Allegheny Passage Trail over the river about a quarter-mile outside of the small Fayette County town. That area is covered with moss and lichen, making the bridge structures blend in with the environment. Except now, they’ve been vandalized.

“Those pylons have been there so long, they’re almost part of the scenery,” Wallace said.

Vandalism, trash and large crowds have been taking their tolls on natural resources around the country this year as more visitors are turning to parks for recreational opportunities as mandates associated with the coronavirus pandemic have canceled many events. Wallace said graffiti always has been a problem in the state’s largest park but this year has been worse in terms of the amount and scale.

Vandals spray painted graffiti in February on hundreds of feet of sandstone rock in the Ferncliff Peninsula Natural Area, across the Youghiogheny River from the visitors center and next to the falls. Wallace said Thursday was the fourth time this year she’s been involved in cleaning up graffiti.

It’s costly to taxpayers — a 1 gallon canister of a specialized graffiti cleaner costs $85, 5 gallons is $400. Wallace said volunteers and workers will have to make a second pass at the new vandalism because they ran out of cleaning solution Thursday.

In addition to the graffiti, staff and volunteers removed a dirty diaper from a tree and collected six bags of dog feces along the Great Allegheny Passage next to a parking lot where a large trash receptacle is available, Wallace said.

“I’d like to say (the dirty diaper) is an uncommon thing,” but it isn’t, she said.

She said park visitors who follow Leave No Trace principles and clean up after themselves and others, including the Friends of Ohiopyle State Park volunteer group, are much appreciated.

Parks around the country and locally have seen graffiti this year. Spray paint was cleaned from Beam Rocks in Forbes State Forest in August.

In Idaho, historic Camp Rock at City of Rocks National Reserve was spray painted in April, the worst case of vandalism in the state park’s history, according to the Idaho Statesman. Arches and Zion national parks in Utah also reported an influx of spray painted graffiti this year, according to The Spectrum.